Big steps from a small girl....my Primal journal

Hello to all here, and a huge thank you to all the forum posters. Your posts and experiences have been inspirational to me as I begin my own journey.

As an introduction.... I am 40 years old and the mother of an 11 year old boy. My journey began, as many of yours did, years back. This leg is one of many, though hopefully this lifestyle will be the one that sticks with me. Bear with me, this is a long intro...

I have always been very petite, about 5'2, and from about 7th grade between 105-110. I was a gymnast as a kid, and continued to teach on through college even after I wasn't competing any longer. I believe this early, consistent exercise (though no Olympic hopeful, I did have three workouts a week of an hour or more) helped to start my body off in the right direction. My dad's side of the family tends to heft, especially the women who all have big boobs and thighs. I got the genes and the tendency to big boobs and thighs, but I believe exercise kept me away from the worst of it, unlike my sister who never exercised and is not obese but significantly heavier than I am.

I was much like everyone else here, somewhat active in college but with access to all-you-can-eat cafeteria food. Despite that, the huge amount of walking and exercise I got kept my weight down. My problem came in my mid-20's when I took a job that required travel and lots of eating out. The weight slowly crept up and stabilized right around 133, which for me was a HUGE amount and pretty evident on my small frame. About 10 years ago I began to pay more attention to my food, after realizing that soymilk was causing my hormones to be out of whack. For the most part I have had good eating habits and on/off exercise. About 2 years ago I decided I needed a kick in the rear to get back into serious shape, and did Farrell's Extreme Bodyshaping. To my horror, initial measurements of BF showed a 31% bodyfat. I did the ten week initial program, and went down to 25% BF, lost about 2 pounds overall (lost fat, gained muscle). My before/after pics were a wake-up call for me about how long I had let the 'creep' go. I did Farrell's for a year after that, 6 days a week with an eating plan of 5-6 meals a day. At the end of that time I was still at about 25% BF and the same weight, though pretty firm! Another 8 weeks with the BodyBugg and DailyPlate got me down 8 more pounds to 124, but my whole life revolved around keeping track of all the numbers.

So, here I sit at 124-125 with about 25% BF. I've slacked on the exercising, even though I was pretty consistently in my home gym for awhile. I'd heard the word 'paleo' tossed around a few times, but didn't pay much attention because my hypoglycemia seemed to be better with 5 small meals. A few weeks ago I started digging and found Mark's website. After reading for an hour, I was sold. It just made SENSE to me in a way few things have before. And the choices are easy and almost limitless. I've tried South Beach in the past, and it seemed like there were few choices, no good recipes, and too much 'checking the list' to see if I could eat something. Primal is almost effortless.

I've been eating Primal for about a week, with a couple of hiccups (who knew Garden of Life Raw Protein was almost completely grain-based, lol?? Got to read the label even on the stuff we think we already know!). So far all is good - the recipes have been phenomenal, and even DH and DS will eat them. The best is not needing three separate mini-meals for work every day which is required when you eat every 2.5-3 hours! And I have NOT been hungry or having the carb cravings. I think this is helped by the fact that my diet was not typical SAD to start with, it just had more grains than it needed and a few too many cheat days.

So, now that I've had a good intro week, I will start adding exercise back into the equation. I bike 12 miles with my son on a training ride we are doing to get ready for the Starlight Spectacular, and in between these rides I have my Jungle Gym XT for strength workouts.

I'm still tracking my calories for now on DailyPlate, until I get more comfortable. As a petite person, I have much less wiggle room in my diet - the extra 100 or 200 calories in a cookie may be meaningless for someone larger, but for me is the difference between calorie deficiency or calorie overload for the day, epecially since my normal burn on a normal day without working out is only about 1700 calories. My carbs have been running right about 75-80 gm for the last week. It is just amazingly easy to keep the calories and carbs low when you take out all the grains and replace them with things that keep you filled up.

Exercise for today:

Hmmm.... I'll hop on my spin bike for 1/2 hour later and take a walk with DH.

Thanks for reading!

TamiO

SW: 125/25% BF
CW: 124/25% BF
GW: 115/20% BF

Goals other than weight right now: Getting my 11 year old to eat more like this. He is only with me 50% of the time due to shared custody, so I only control half his eating and it's not possible to suggest any changes to my ex. Half is better than none.

Thanks for the reply... wasn't sure anyone would read such a long post, lol!

My son does pretty well. I've raised him to be a label reader, and he has never been as much of a sugar eater as some kids. As a smaller kid he would routinely turn down cake and ice cream at birthday parties just because he didn't like them. We discovered early on (after his first ice cream at the age of 2) that he became a DEMON when he ate sugar, so we limited it.

He actually eats more of the paleo dinners than I would have expected - he ate cabbage the other night without a word, and he LOVED the pork lettuce cups. His dad has chickens, so he does have exposure to where food comes from, and he sees my healthy habits and exercise by both parents. He is even doing a project on fast food for school, and refuses to set foot in a McDonalds. My main issues are his lunches (he loves PBJ and cheez-its) and he drinks a couple of sodas a week. I'm trying to not just take it away from him when he is with me(this on Friday nights when we get pizza before he goes back to his dad) but let him know the consequences. He's getting it - he caught my look last Friday and quietly dumped the soda and got some water, lol.

My hypo was not in evidence this last week. Now, this is not a recent condition, and goes back to childhood. If I didn't eat, I would eventually get sick to my stomach and then dizzy and pass out, wherever I happened to be. I also tended to get sort of foggy/stupid when that happened, and that was my signal to eat something. No problems this past week!!!

Glad to hear it. I hope you continue to have success with the hypo. Comforting to know you won't be passing out behind the wheel of a car anytime soon!

Your son seems to be pretty smart about food. Good job, Mom. Mine is 5 and still thinks chicken nuggets are real food... My 2 year old girl still eats "real meat" and loves potatoes. She never seemed to interested in pasta and the daycare tells me they have to fight her to eat bread. She asks for pineapple a lot... I think there's hope for her yet... My son will be a struggle.

Head hunger.... been dealing with this the last two days and not sure why.... it's not a carb craving as much as just feeling like I want to eat something, even after I just finished an enormous green smoothie (spinach, chard, coconut milk, coconut oil, blueberries, double Designer Whey protein). I'm tracking in DailyPlate so I know there is plenty of fat, plenty of protein, some fiber.... erf.

I did pretty well yesterday, even though we went to MIL house for my DH's little sisters 16th birthday. Chinese food, cake and ice cream, and a snack offering of cheese and fruit before dinner. I managed a little cheese, ordered scallops for dinner, and passed on cake and ice cream.

The weirdest part of the whole dinner was the lemon 'sauce' for the scallops. This was a fairly high-end place, but those scallops were breaded (ick, pulled off) and the lemon sauce was provided in a to-go container that would normally be used for soup - and it was half full so like a cup of sauce! That had to be the nastiest most chemically tasting c$%p I have ever tasted. Not sure where they got the 'lemon' from but my guess is it had the words dyalzehydrathydrolizedamethylated somewhere in the title. Bleh!